George and Alfred Degiorgio have made a new court bid to suspend their upcoming trial for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The brothers, who both stand accused of carrying out the 2017 assassination, are claiming that their right to a fair hearing would be breached in several ways if the trial were to go ahead. 

One of the two, Alfred Degiorgio, was staging a hunger strike in prison to protest about the situation before he was taken to Mater Dei Hospital for observation on Sunday. 

In an application filed before the First Hall, Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction, they argued that their defence has been dealt a crippling blow by their lawyer renouncing his brief last month. 

William Cuschieri informed a court some weeks ago that he would no longer be representing the brothers in the case. A court assigned the brothers two legal aid lawyers after they failed to nominate a new lawyer of their choosing. 

The Degiorgios are arguing that they are unable to set up a valid defence in the trial without the help of their trusted lawyer, given the scale and complexity of the case, which includes around 15,000 documents and four gigabytes of data.  

'Not enough time'

They say they have not been given enough time to source another lawyer of their own personal choice and were assigned legal aid lawyers against their own wishes. 

In light of such circumstances, the accused would be deprived of their fundamental right to a fair hearing if the trial were to go ahead, a legal aid counsel appointed specifically to file their latest constitutional application argued in the document. 

Moreover, given the media “bombardment” their case had drawn, both locally and on an international level, they had no guarantee nor peace of mind that any potential jurors would not have heard about this case, the Degiorgios’ lawyer went on. 

Every juror would be prejudiced from the very start and thus not impartial since, being directly aware of the facts, with all due respect, such jurors would have already reached their own conclusions. 

There was no guarantee that any juror would have cancelled all information before the trial got underway and would limit themselves solely to the evidence produced in court. 

Consequently, the applicants argued that this would breach their right to a fair hearing and thus requested the court to direct the Criminal Court to suspend the trial by jury until this constitutional issue is definitively decided upon. 

Legal aid lawyer Joseph P. Bonnici signed the application that was filed against the State Advocate, the Attorney General and the Director General of the Courts Services Agency.